


Expect the Unexpected

by bigolegay



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Bounty Hunting, Gen, He aint got no boots, Matricide, Miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 06:36:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17483018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigolegay/pseuds/bigolegay
Summary: If there was one thing Arthur Morgan had learnt in all of his years, it was this: expect the unexpected. The problem, however, was that Arthur Morgan wasn’t always good at remembering things he had learnt. It was why he was bad at fishing, it was why he wasn’t an excellent tracker, and it was why he was currently on the side of the road with no boots, no horse, and no bounty.





	Expect the Unexpected

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for graphic description of a crime scene, miscarriage, and matricide. Thanks to tanfa for giving me the prompt YOU PROBABLY DIDN'T SEE IT GOING LIKE THIS THO HUH?

If there was one thing Arthur Morgan had learnt in all of his years, it was this: expect the unexpected. The problem, however, was that Arthur Morgan wasn’t always good at remembering things he had learnt. It was why he was bad at fishing, it was why he wasn’t an excellent tracker, and it was why he was currently on the side of the road with no boots, no horse, and no bounty.

She hadn’t seemed dangerous – that was his only excuse. “Mad” Mary Milton had seemed just that: mad, and not in the angry way. He’d found her half-starved in the forest, her fingers purple with huckleberry juice, her hair littered with twigs, her breath reeking of the raw fish she’d been surviving on. She’d yelled, she’d cried, she’d screamed. There was blood on her nightdress, running brown and stinking down her legs to her bare feet, cut by rock and thorn.

Matricide was her crime, the death of a husband who’d beaten her so hard she’s miscarried. Arthur hadn’t seen the leavings of her crime but the sheriff had been kind enough to explain it, his eyes wide and mouth frothing with tobacco as he did. Apparently the man’s head was half off. Apparently in the gash of his neck she’d shoved the poor babe, barely even human looking, all jelly-limbed and lidless-eyes. When he found her in the woods, Arthur could believe it. On her neck amongst the spatter of rust-blood were the fine blonde hairs of her husband’s head, caked on the flushed and scratched skin of her décolletage. Her face was a purpled mess. Her front teeth were missing.

“Let’s get you home, Miss Milton,” he’d said, and when she’d fought him he’d trussed her up and heaved her over the end of his horse. She wailed then, a deep painful thing that made the nicer part of him ache in sympathy. But money was money, and a bounty was a bounty, and Dutch had almost bitten his fingers raw over the pitiful state of their finances – he’d seen them, red and puffy, the nails chewed ragged. So Arthur pushed that part of him down and set off. He was careful in his trot so as not to bump against her empty womb and more than necessary, and found himself lulled onwards by the rhythmic sob of her weeping.

By the time she’d fallen quiet Arthur had no space in his mind for suspicion, only relief. There were a few moments where he could almost imagine he was alone – just him, and dear Betsy his horse, and the canyon around them filled with the smell of pine and the song of birds in the evening. Then there were teeth on his neck, and a spasm of pain, and purple-stained fingers on his eyes, in his eyes, _pressing_.

He struggled, elbows flying back, a yell in his throat. Betsy snorted, reared with a high shriek. He swore, grabbing the horn of the saddle as two bloody legs hung about his waist and those teeth bit harder.

Top-heavy, his grip slipped and he fell, feet tangling on the stirrups, tugging. Still clutching him Mad Mary yelped like a wounded dog. The ground met him with a sickening crunch. Everything went horrifically black.

 

When he blinked his eyes open they stung and his vision doubled, tripled, then slowly slid back into place. The canyon was silent but for the gentle rush of a sluggish tributary and a far off bark from a fox. The sky was painted in pinks and purples as the sun set. The clouds frothed and bubbled, and Arthur knew from experience that when the moon rose the sky would be painted silver, like the rippling of the waves at sea, and the chill would be kept off by mother nature’s cloudy shawl.

He sat up slowly, each movement oddly stiff, like he’d lain on a cheap bed for too many hours in too much cold. No horse stood by grazing at the grass, no Mad Mary lay dead-weight beside him. Some of the confusion in his head cleared, and with a movement too-fast he scrambled to his feet. Pain cut at the fleshy arch of his foot and he looked down.

No boots. His white feet stared back at him, hairy toes balanced precariously on the sharp rocks of the riverbed.

“Shit,” Arthur swore, and looked about him again, as if chestnut Betsy has just somehow camouflaged herself amongst the grey and green landscape. He called for her, voice rough from laying on his back and breathing the cold air. Over the ringing of his ears, he could hear no stamping of hooves. When he swore, his breath came out in a cloud.

“Hey, you alright there?”

Arthur turned towards the voice, head swinging too fast and the slick blood on the back of his head tugging, tacky, at his hair. Before him, a fisherman, brow crumpled in confused concern. Behind them a horse in the distance, a campfire.

Arthur looked down at the man’s shoes.

He took his pistol from its holster. They’d do.

 

If there was one thing Arthur Morgan had learnt in all of his years, it was this: expect the unexpected. Apparently, the dead fisherman hadn’t heard that one.


End file.
